The Return of the Native

1--”My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is”

In Clym Yeobright's face could be dimly seen the typical countenanceof the future. Should there be a classic period to art hereafter, itsPheidias may produce such faces. The view of life as a thing to be putup with, replacing that zest for existence which was so intense in earlycivilizations, must ultimately enter so thoroughly into the constitutionof the advanced races that its facial expression will become acceptedas a new artistic departure. People already feel that a man who liveswithout disturbing a curve of feature, or setting a mark of mentalconcern anywhere upon himself, is too far removed from modernperceptiveness to be a modern type. Physically beautiful men--the gloryof the race when it was young--are almost an anachronism now; and we maywonder whether, at some time or other, physically beautiful women maynot be an anachronism likewise.

The truth seems to be that a long line of disillusive centuries haspermanently displaced the Hellenic idea of life, or whatever it maybe called. What the Greeks only suspected we know well; what theirAeschylus imagined our nursery children feel. That old-fashionedrevelling in the general situation grows less and less possible as weuncover the defects of natural laws, and see the quandary that man is inby their operation.

The lineaments which will get embodied in ideals based upon this newrecognition will probably be akin to those of Yeobright. The observer'seye was arrested, not by his face as a picture, but by his face as apage; not by what it was, but by what it recorded. His features wereattractive in the light of symbols, as sounds intrinsically commonbecome attractive in language, and as shapes intrinsically simple becomeinteresting in writing.

He had been a lad of whom something was expected. Beyond this all hadbeen chaos. That he would be successful in an original way, or that hewould go to the dogs in an original way, seemed equally probable. Theonly absolute certainty about him was that he would not stand still inthe circumstances amid which he was born.

Hence, when his name was casually mentioned by neighbouring yeomen,the listener said, ”Ah, Clym Yeobright--what is he doing now?” When theinstinctive question about a person is, What is he doing? it isfelt that he will be found to be, like most of us, doing nothing inparticular. There is an indefinite sense that he must be invading someregion of singularity, good or bad. The devout hope is that he is doingwell. The secret faith is that he is making a mess of it. Half a dozencomfortable market-men, who were habitual callers at the Quiet Womanas they passed by in their carts, were partial to the topic. In fact,though they were not Egdon men, they could hardly avoid it while theysucked their long clay tubes and regarded the heath through the window.Clym had been so inwoven with the heath in his boyhood that hardlyanybody could look upon it without thinking of him. So the subjectrecurred: if he were making a fortune and a name, so much the betterfor him; if he were making a tragical figure in the world, so much thebetter for a narrative.

The fact was that Yeobright's fame had spread to an awkward extentbefore he left home. ”It is bad when your fame outruns your means,” saidthe Spanish Jesuit Gracian. At the age of six he had asked a Scriptureriddle: ”Who was the first man known to wear breeches?” and applausehad resounded from the very verge of the heath. At seven he painted theBattle of Waterloo with tiger-lily pollen and black-currant juice, inthe absence of water-colours. By the time he reached twelve he had inthis manner been heard of as artist and scholar for at least two milesround. An individual whose fame spreads three or four thousand yards inthe time taken by the fame of others similarly situated to travel six oreight hundred, must of necessity have something in him. Possibly Clym'sfame, like Homer's, owed something to the accidents of his situationnevertheless famous he was.

He grew up and was helped out in life. That waggery of fate whichstarted Clive as a writing clerk, Gay as a linen-draper, Keats as asurgeon, and a thousand others in a thousand other odd ways, banishedthe wild and ascetic heath lad to a trade whose sole concern was withthe especial symbols of self-indulgence and vainglory.

The details of this choice of a business for him it is not necessaryto give. At the death of his father a neighbouring gentleman had kindlyundertaken to give the boy a start, and this assumed the form of sendinghim to Budmouth. Yeobright did not wish to go there, but it was the onlyfeasible opening. Thence he went to London and thence, shortly after,to Paris, where he had remained till now.

Something being expected of him, he had not been at home many daysbefore a great curiosity as to why he stayed on so long began to arisein the heath. The natural term of a holiday had passed, yet he stillremained. On the Sunday morning following the week of Thomasin'smarriage a discussion on this subject was in progress at a hair-cuttingbefore Fairway's house. Here the local barbering was always done atthis hour on this day, to be followed by the great Sunday wash of theinhabitants at noon, which in its turn was followed by the great Sundaydressing an hour later. On Egdon Heath Sunday proper did not begin tilldinner-time, and even then it was a somewhat battered specimen of theday.

These Sunday-morning hair-cuttings were performed by Fairway; the victimsitting on a chopping-block in front of the house, without a coat, andthe neighbours gossiping around, idly observing the locks of hair asthey rose upon the wind after the snip, and flew away out of sight tothe four quarters of the heavens. Summer and winter the scene was thesame, unless the wind were more than usually blusterous, when the stoolwas shifted a few feet round the corner. To complain of cold in sittingout of doors, hatless and coatless, while Fairway told true storiesbetween the cuts of the scissors, would have been to pronounce yourselfno man at once. To flinch, exclaim, or move a muscle of the face atthe small stabs under the ear received from those instruments, or atscarifications of the neck by the comb, would have been thought a grossbreach of good manners, considering that Fairway did it all for nothing.A bleeding about the poll on Sunday afternoons was amply accounted forby the explanation. ”I have had my hair cut, you know.”

The conversation on Yeobright had been started by a distant view of theyoung man rambling leisurely across the heath before them.

”A man who is doing well elsewhere wouldn't bide here two or three weeksfor nothing,” said Fairway. ”He's got some project in 's head--dependupon that.”

”Well, 'a can't keep a diment shop here,” said Sam.

”I don't see why he should have had them two heavy boxes home if he hadnot been going to bide; and what there is for him to do here the Lord inheaven knows.”

Before many more surmises could be indulged in Yeobright had come near;and seeing the hair-cutting group he turned aside to join them. Marchingup, and looking critically at their faces for a moment, he said, withoutintroduction, ”Now, folks, let me guess what you have been talkingabout.”

”Ay, sure, if you will,” said Sam.

”About me.”

”Now, it is a thing I shouldn't have dreamed of doing, otherwise,” saidFairway in a tone of integrity; ”but since you have named it, MasterYeobright, I'll own that we was talking about 'ee. We were wonderingwhat could keep you home here mollyhorning about when you have made sucha world-wide name for yourself in the nick-nack trade--now, that's thetruth o't.”

”I'll tell you,” said Yeobright with unexpected earnestness. ”I amnot sorry to have the opportunity. I've come home because, all thingsconsidered, I can be a trifle less useless here than anywhere else. ButI have only lately found this out. When I first got away from home Ithought this place was not worth troubling about. I thought our lifehere was contemptible. To oil your boots instead of blacking them, todust your coat with a switch instead of a brush--was there ever anythingmore ridiculous? I said.”

”So 'tis; so 'tis!”

”No, no--you are wrong; it isn't.”

”Beg your pardon, we thought that was your meaning?”

”Well, as my views changed my course became very depressing. I foundthat I was trying to be like people who had hardly anything in commonwith myself. I was endeavouring to put off one sort of life for anothersort of life, which was not better than the life I had known before. Itwas simply different.”

”True; a sight different,” said Fairway.

”Yes, Paris must be a taking place,” said Humphrey. ”Grand shop-winders,trumpets, and drums; and here be we out of doors in all winds andweathers--”

”But you mistake me,” pleaded Clym. ”All this was very depressing. Butnot so depressing as something I next perceived--that my business wasthe idlest, vainest, most effeminate business that ever a man couldbe put to. That decided me--I would give it up and try to follow somerational occupation among the people I knew best, and to whom I couldbe of most use. I have come home; and this is how I mean to carry outmy plan. I shall keep a school as near to Egdon as possible, so as to beable to walk over here and have a night-school in my mother's house.But I must study a little at first, to get properly qualified. Now,neighbours, I must go.”

And Clym resumed his walk across the heath.

”He'll never carry it out in the world,” said Fairway. ”In a few weekshe'll learn to see things otherwise.”

”'Tis good-hearted of the young man,” said another. ”But, for my part, Ithink he had better mind his business.”